What Is a Parasocial Relationship?

So what's a parasocial relationship? We've been sitting since the 1950s and that's a little bit. You can have a small component of identification in there, but really the key is I feel like the other character on the screen is my friend or my significant other. So I'm recognizing a mediated character in the same way that I would recognize a person in a normal interpersonal relationship. In other words, you're treating them like a real person or at least wanting to.